British students to get astronaut training

British students will be taught how to be astronauts.

Jeff Hoffman, a former Nasa astronaut, a veteran of five space shuttles, will teach the course at Leicester University.

He will offer instruction on how to survive in space, how to cope with the psychological demands of long-term space travel and how to conduct a spacewalk.

Mr Hoffman, who took part in crucial spacewalks to fix cameras aboard the Hubble space telescope in 1993, will join Leicester as a visiting professor but will maintain his position in the astronauts department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Leicester course begins as the UK prepares for a high-level meeting of European science ministers, at which human space exploration will be discussed.

The government is reviewing its long-held opposition to human spaceflight and an announcement is expected weeks before the European Space Agency reveals at least four new recruits to its astronaut team. Britain has never had an astronaut train through ESA because its funding covers only robotic missions and ground-based astronomy.

Mr Hoffman saidl: "There’s a strong student interest,"

"If Britain continues with that policy, these students will still be able to work in other capacities at the European Space Agency," he told the Guardian.

Martin Barstow, head of physics and astronomy at Leicester, said: "I’m fed up with the way the UK keeps dodging the issue of being involved in human spaceflight. Our students don’t need to be loaded with that baggage.

"They still have aspirations to be astronauts and they still want to get involved in the space industry, so why should the UK government’s attitude be a handicap?"